The White Ocean
by Nightengale
Summary: This is the story of the life of Alice Longbottom, after the attack which put her and Frank into St. Mungo's.


I spend my days in a white room that's found on a white hall. I don't think I've ever been off this hall and not often out of our room.

The hall smells like soap and bleach. I can't think of anything else that a place should smell like. I know there must have been some other smells but I can no longer remember them. I always wear a white gown to match my room and nothing upon my feet. There are other white rooms on this hall with other white clad people but I do not know them and I don't think I should. They have always been with me, I know, but I can't remember when this began or when what was before ended.

I live with a man who I know means something to me. When I look at him I feel like I'm starving. My stomach hurts even if I've just eaten, like I should do something to fill that space. I cannot remember his name or how we came to be sharing this room but I know it's not by chance. We are something to each other. I don't feel strange touching him or when he touches me, unlike the witches and wizards in white and gray and red who care for us. Their touches feel alien while his feels safe even though I do not know his name or who he is. I know he's important to me.

I cannot remember my own name. I know I have one because I can see its shadow. The people here call me my name all the time and though I hear it as they say it I cannot make it stick. I know it's me they are speaking to when they say my name right as it leaves their lips. As soon as the sound stops it's gone from my mind.

I do not know how long I have lived in this white place with the man who shares my room. I know it is longer than now. I know I was not born here and that I have been somewhere else but I cannot see when or where. Place and time smudge in my head. I only see colors. I have been somewhere very green with cool air and a yellow glow around it. I have also been somewhere brown like the wood of our chairs which is sometimes dark and other times light, but always a place which feels like happiness. There is also a sharp blinding red that is only connected with pain and screaming noise.

I have forgotten how to speak. I know what speech is. I hear it and know what it is but I cannot do it. I hear speech as sounds sometimes clear, others cloudy. It's as though anyone who speaks to me is coming as an ocean. It is murky as well as clear, bubbly and loud. Its noise that sometimes has clarity but is more often indefinable. I want to understand it all but I can't. I lean in and get close. Maybe if I try and cross the ocean I will understand it all. Some phrases come across clear, repetition helps. Sometimes I even try to repeat but I only end up like a puffer fish. It is as though my voice has left me for someone else or I used up all I was given. Now I have no speeches left to make. I know that once I could speak but my ability has been stolen. So, I stay mute and try to hear across the sea.

Sometimes the man and I just look at each other. We sit across form each other in wooden chairs with white pillows. I look at his blue eyes, brown hair, oval face, long nose, and thin cheeks. I try to trace his face in adjectives and adverbs, hoping they will reorganize and make a person that I really know. I stare at his lips, thin with vertical lines of texture. I want to take these pieces of a man, add in words with the shapes and colors to create a man I love. I want him to be true to me so that I can say his name.

There is a young boy and a large woman who come to see us. I know them too. It is through the boy that I mark the passage of time. He is the most real thing in my life, an anchor in my white ocean. He comes into our white world in color. The clothes he wears changes through the rainbow and I can see him grow. I have watched him grow taller and change shape. He is the most important thing to me. I wait with this man for when the boy will come.

The large feathered woman with him is like a sea gull. She's the loudest thing over the ocean. When they both come to see us she cries at me in a jumble of sounds every time. I never understand what she is telling me. It is all noise.

The boy doesn't often speak to us or says very little but always looks sad. I know it is my fault that he is sad. His eyes are an island I can cling to. My feelings are never as real as when I look at him. I know I love him dearly and cannot bear the fact that I make him so despondent. His sorrow is because I live in my white room on this white hall and he is somewhere else. The boy, the man, and I should be together somewhere else. Yet I have done something in my smudged past which has separated us.

I try to make him smile. I give him bright paper which comes off of the treats we get from the people here. Such bright colors should bring joy in this white place. It is small and weak to give him paper to make his eyes less full of pain but it is all I have. I'm not sure if it ever works but I keep trying. I just want to say 'please don't be sad because of me' but I don't know how to translate those words into sounds, so I give him the color I have. The reds and greens and yellows and blues are bright, so shouldn't it help a little?

I think I am his mother and I have failed him.

Things feel fuzzy again when they leave. The man and I sleep then eat or the reverse order. I listen to sounds and sometimes hear words like 'please' and 'better' and 'Alice.' I don't always know just what they mean. The man, I think, is like me. He cannot speak or understand but I know he feels I am important to him too. He feels the ocean like I do and waits, just like me, for the boy to return.

I know a little about colors I've seen and deep feelings I have felt before I came to this white room on its white hall sometime in the past. Truly, I do not know much for sure here but there is one word that I do understand. It is this: insane. I know it because this is the word which describes what ever it is that I am.


End file.
